School cooks to benefit from eight new centres

Areas such as Doncaster, Manchester, Lancashire and Worcester are set to benefit from the new facilities. The School Food Trust said that Feast (Food Excellence and Skills Training) centres will provide cooks with the skills they need to ensure school meals are of the highest quality and that they meet nutritional standards. Prue Leith, chair of the School Food Trust, commented on the benefits these new centres will bring: "Serving high-quality as well as nutritionally sound food will result in more children eating the new healthy school meals, and I hope it will encourage schools in this area to allow their cooks to come on a course." She added: "School cooks, just like teachers and doctors, need to keep up their skills and their enthusiasm." Children's minister Baroness Morgan, continued: "School cooks are too often the unsung heroes in our schools. We want to raise their status among fellow staff, pupils and parents, acknowledging the highly skilled jobs that they do."